Gawker‘s current muse is the Meatpacking District, and in an attempt to exorcise the demons that have driven them to this absurd and unholy fascination, they’ve posted three times today on the topic, perhaps hoping to exhaust this obsession before it becomes embarassing.
Too late.
But this one is funny at least:
Approx. 4500 B.C.: Lenape tribe settle in New York area, shun Meatpacking District as “too canoe & kayak.”
1524: Florentine navigator Giovvani da Verrazzano becomes first person of Italian descent to visit area; gets handjob from drunken local after claiming to be “a large personne in the Spice trades…”
1626: New Netherland Director General Peter Minuit purchases Manhattan from local tribes for $24 plus promise to buy at least two bottles of Cristal in V.I.P. lounge.
1664: Director General Peter Stuyvesant surrenders New Amsterdam to the English; King Charles II declares territory “an area forewith to which we will send our most wretched, unpleasant personages”; early progenitors of various Sykes siblings sit up and take notice…
1985: Florent opens. Although even the neighborhood’s fiercest detractors acknowledge innovation and daring implicit in the opening of a bistro in the MPD at this point in time, it can only be viewed as the root of the poisonous tree from whence springs all evil…
2000: Samantha Jones moves from UES to MPD. Thousands of young women who are so unimaginative that they base their own lives on an HBO program written by a gay man and some dude who will eventually become the world’s most annoying advice columnist decide that the area is the next big thing.
Lotus opens. Had al-Qaeda bombed this place during certain evenings of its first year they would today be considered national heroes, feted at awards dinners and their features put on stamps and currency…